Trumpism permanently changing the GOP: Grumpy Old Party

In my opinion:

Angry white supporters of Donald Trump don't recognize the source of their emotions are failed Republican policies. Republicans are anti-labor unions, anti-increase in minimum wage, anti-taxes to invest in jobs producing infrastructure projects, anti-student loan debt forgiveness and so on.  In fact, the GOP only favors policies that support the rich, at the expense of the very people who are angry Trumponians.

Will Trumpism herald the demise of the GOP as we knew it? RIP

Trump: Permanently changing the GOP? Published in the April 15, 2016 "The Week".

Whether or not Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination, he has already “transformed America as much as any political figure of our era,” said Jeet Heer in The New Republic. The Republican front-runner’s demagogic attacks on Hispanics, Muslims, and black protesters have energized white Americans “who are afraid of the way the country is changing—economically, culturally, and demographically,” and liberated them to be “more vocal and confident in expressing their prejudices, resentments, and hatreds.” Posing as a strongman, Trump has even made physical attacks on protesters “a ritualistic part of his campaign.” The forces he’s unleashed have “Trumpized” the Republican Party, and “won’t easily be boxed back up.” Republican rival Ted Cruz has mimicked the New Yorker’s hard-line stance on immigration and his Islamophobia, and future Republican candidates will look to tap into the same resentments. “Trump might fail, in other words, but Trumpism will live on.”

Actually, “the Republican Party can recover from Donald Trump faster than you think,” said Michael Brendan Dougherty in TheWeek.com. Trumpism will very likely lead to “electoral disaster” this year, because it simply alienates too many people—including women, Hispanics, and younger Republicans. There are no Trumpistas in Congress, and once he is emphatically defeated, his movement will fade. 

In the grand scheme of things, Trump “is really not a big deal,” said Sean Trende in RealClearPolitics.com. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have historically bounced back from political disaster with surprising speed. Watergate supposedly devastated the GOP, for example, leading to Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976—“yet four years later, the Republicans won the first of three landslide presidential wins.”

OK, so let’s say the GOP recovers from its Trump (Trumposity!) nightmare quickly, said Michael Bourne in Salon​.com. The question is, “All that highly combustible anger and fear we’re seeing on the nightly news”—all that rage among lower middle-class white Americans who have been left behind economically and see their social status under threat—“where will it go once Trump is gone?” 

Tragically, Trump (some say "Drumpf") has authorized these angry people to scapegoat minorities and modernity for their troubles, and to counterattack with fists and incendiary, racialized rhetoric. 

After November, we’ll still be left with the “naked fact” of Trump’s followers: “too numerous for the rest of us to ignore, too angry to sit still for long.”

(Indeed, it appears as though the "Grumpy Old Party", risks facing the grim reaper, unless its policies change to become more progressive and stops being regressive.)